NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. - The judge at the Robert Pickton murder trial threw out days of evidence and testimony from more than a dozen witnesses, telling jurors Monday they will have to ignore all the evidence about an unidentified woman known as Jane Doe.
Her partial skull was found in Mission, B.C., in 1995, and seven years later investigators at the Pickton farm found a heel bone and rib bone with the same DNA.
The woman was never identified and investigators gave the remains the name of Jane Doe.
"I've decided that the Jane Doe evidence is not anything you can consider in any way in determining whether the Crown has proven that Mr. Pickton is guilty of any or all of the offences on the indictment or whether you have a reasonable doubt on any or all of those offences,'' Justice James Williams told the jury of seven men and five women.
Testimony from civilians, police officers and forensic specialists about Jane Doe's remains were woven throughout the Crown's eight-month case against Robert Pickton for the murders of six Vancouver women.
Jane Doe was not among those charges.
The ruling means the jury must sever even the most mundane references to Jane Doe from the reams of evidence.
The judge, in an unusual mid-trial instruction, cited witness Brian McConaghy's testimony as an example of the jury's task.
The tool-mark expert had testified that cut marks found on the remains of Andrea Joesbury, Mona Wilson and Sereena Abotsway were similar to those found on the Jane Doe partial skull.
That evidence will now have to be disregarded, but the jury can still take into account McConaghy's evidence on tools that could have been used to cut the other skulls.
Photographs of evidence relating to Jane Doe will also be stricken from the record. The judge said some will be replaced.
"You must not speculate why I have done this,'' said Williams. "You must also not for a moment think that this is the fault of the Crown or fault of the defence. It's not.
"The result for you is that you must put the Jane Doe evidence entirely out of your mind. You must disregard what you have heard about her. That evidence cannot form any part of your reasoning. It must simply be ignored.''
He didn't give a reason for his decision.
Williams said he'll give the jury more explicit instructions on how to handle the evidence at the end of the trial.
Pickton is on trial for the murders of Abotsway, Wilson, Joesbury, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe and Marnie Frey.
A trial on the remaining 20 charges is to follow at a later date.
"The integrity of this process requires, it demands, that you accept my instructions and that you follow them,'' Williams said.
"Our system operates on the premise you will faithfully follow the instructions that I give you. It is in that way that we have confidence in the trial process working properly.''
After his instructions, the Crown resumed its cross-examination of Bill Malone, a longtime friend and business associate of the accused and his younger brother Dave.
Jurors heard how what started as a $300 per week payment from Dave Pickton to Malone for jobs on and off the property eventually ballooned to $1,000, which Malone never declared as income because he said he was putting it all back in the business.
Crown prosecutor Mike Petrie hammered at Malone's earlier testimony on the dizzying parade of people coming and going from the Pickton property, taking him through his daily routine and asking whether he could have known how many people were actually around if he wasn't there all the time.
Malone initially said he would see 200 cars a day coming onto the farm, but he told court Monday he had exaggerated and some days it could be 70 or some days 150.
Court had heard earlier that Malone wasn't co-operating with police during the initial investigation on Pickton's farm but acted as an unofficial spokesperson for the family doing interviews.
Petrie accused Malone of deliberately spreading misinformation about the case for telling a television reporter that an inhaler belonging to a missing woman had initially been found in a car seized from a salvage lot.
Malone said he "may or may not'' have said so, until Petrie played him the tape of the interview _ twice.
Malone then said it was his opinion at the time that that was where the inhaler had come from.
In the early days of the trial, jurors heard that an inhaler with Abotsway's name on it was found inside Pickton's trailer.
It was the discovery of the inhaler and other items that prompted police to halt a firearms investigation on the property and launch the case that eventually led to the ongoing trial.
